If you're a fan of markdown, take a look at reStructuredText (RST). The syntax is very similar to markdown, e.g. italics, bold, and ``code``, but includes thing

If you're a fan of markdown, take a look at reStructuredText (RST). The syntax is very similar to markdown, e.g. italics, bold, and ``code``, but includes things that are inextricably missing from markdown, like definition lists, tables, footnotes, citations, comments, etc. I think the best counter argument to your comment is that RST has all of the benefits you've listed (easy to write, readable by technical and non-technical users, and translatable into HTML and other formats) plus more. The syntax of RST is just as lightweight as markdown, making RST appropriate in all of the same places. In use cases where markdown is under-defined, e.g. technical documentation, there are a variety of competing syntaxes, e.g. the non-standard ``{.foo}`` syntax or the competing flavors of tables. On the other hand, RST has a pair of extensible constructs, called roles and directives, that allows various systems to add features in a portable way. If a particular system doesn't support a particular role/directive, there is a graceful fallback. This is in contrast with markdown where the fallback is to dump your custom syntax into the document as plain text. FWIW, this comment is valid RST. https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtex... P.S. The HN web UI swallows my examples of bold and italics in the first paragraph.